This.
The third arc pulses faintly. Dalton, somewhere in the building. He's been somewhere in the building this whole time — doing his job, filing his reports, being very professionally present in a facility where the bond between us is loud enough that I can feel his direction through two floors and a corridor.
I wonder what he's writing down.
I wonder if he wonders what's happening in here.
I press my face against Gray's shoulder and decide that's a problem for tomorrow.
Chapter seven
Ipull my jacket tighter coming through the door and the cold hits my face like a slap. Alaskan weather doesn't negotiate. It simply is, and everything that exists here does so on its terms.
Stone is already running the warm-up when I arrive. He clocks me — one nod, eyes back on the group — and keeps talking. I take a position at the edge of the yard and look at who's here.
Six residents, counting me. And Jake.
Jake is at the far end of the yard, arms crossed, jaw set, looking at the fence line with the expression of a man who has decided to be present under protest. His opinion of being here is visible from twenty feet away and possibly further.
He hasn't looked at me yet.
I turn my attention to Stone.
Jake is watching Stone. Not the threat-assessment scan he runs on every space he enters, that flat cataloguing sweep that maps exits and bodies and potential problems. This is different.
Attentive in a way that pulls at something in his face he doesn't know is showing. He tracks Stone's movements with the awareness of someone who has spent a long time knowing exactly where that person is in any given space. The way your body learns to orient toward the person it takes its cues from and doesn't unlearn it just because the context changes.
The habit hasn't left him even though the context has.
Stone ran the warm-up and Jake's shoulders dropped a fraction when Stone's voice filled the yard — not relaxing, something more involuntary than that. Recognition. The easing of a body that has been braced for a long time and just heard something familiar.
Stone doesn't acknowledge it. He runs the warm-up the way he runs everything — methodical, present. If he feels Jake's attention he doesn't show it in any way I can read. But he positions himself, I notice, so that Jake can always see him. Each time Stone moves to demonstrate something or address a different resident, he ends up at an angle Jake can track without turning his head. Small thing. Entirely deliberate.
I watch Stone do this three times before I'm sure I'm seeing it correctly. The fourth time I'm certain.
He knows Jake is here. He knows what Jake needs, which is to be able to see him, and he's providing it without making it a thing. Without asking. Without acknowledging the dynamic between them that I can read from twenty feet away. Just — arranging himself in the space so the man who followed him off a mountain can find him whenever he needs to.
I don't know anything about what happened up there. But I know what I'm looking at.
***
Dalton is at the edge of the yard.
He has his notepad. He always has his notepad. Right now he's writing, which means he's observing something and filing it, which means he could be observing anyone and probably is but the third arc knows exactly how much of his attention is pointing in my direction and doesn't keep that information to itself.
I have approximately zero feelings about this.
Jake clocks him inside thirty seconds. I watch it happen — the scan landing on Dalton and staying a beat longer than everything else. Jake's head stops moving. His weight shifts slightly onto his back foot. He's reading Dalton the way he reads every potential variable — the notepad, the position at the yard's edge, the professional stillness that isn't quite the stillness of a wolf. Something about Dalton registers as different and Jake is working out what.
Dalton looks up from his notepad, meets Jake's eyes briefly, looks back down. Unhurried. Neither challenging nor retreating.
Jake looks at me. "Who's that."
"Security consultant. He's monitoring me."
Jake looks back at Dalton. Something settles in his expression.
"Hm," he says.
